Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, top, applauds a group of Aborigines from the "Stolen Generations" who were in the public gallery of Parliament today.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, top, applauds a group of Aborigines from the "Stolen Generations" who were in the public gallery of Parliament today.

Photo: MARK BAKER, AP

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Aborigines Gail Hill, left, and her daughter Amanda Hill listen to the speech in Sydney.

Aborigines Gail Hill, left, and her daughter Amanda Hill listen to the speech in Sydney.

Photo: RICK RYCROFT, AP

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Australia officially, publicly apologizes to Aborigines

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CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA — Aborigines organized breakfast barbecues in the Outback, schools held assemblies and giant TV screens went up in state capitals today as Australians watched a live broadcast of their government apologizing for policies that degraded its indigenous people.

In a historic parliamentary vote that supporters said would open a new chapter in race relations, lawmakers unanimously adopted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's motion on behalf of all Australians.

"We apologize for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians," Rudd said in Parliament, reading from the motion.

Aborigines remain the country's poorest and most disadvantaged group, and Rudd has made improving their lives one of government's top priorities.

As part of that campaign, Aborigines were invited for the first time to give a traditional welcome Tuesday at the official opening of the Parliament session — symbolic recognition that the land on which the capital was built was taken from Aborigines without compensation.

The apology is directed at tens of thousands of Aborigines of the "Stolen Generations," who were forcibly taken from their families as children under now abandoned assimilation policies.

"We apologize for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians," the apology motion says.

"To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

"And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry."

The reading of Australia's apology and the parliamentary vote was broadcast nationally, and people across the country watched, from Outback breakfasts to school assemblies.

Years of divisive debate

More than 1,000 people gathered at two giants screens outside
Parliament House
and watched Rudd's speech in silence, many waving Australian and Aboriginal flags. Applause broke out occasionally, but mostly they listened intently.

"It's great to get behind what the government's trying to do; bring black and white Australians together," said William Murray, a non-indigenous 17-year-old student who traveled for four hours by bus from Sydney to witness the occasion.

"This is a historic day," said Tom Calma, who was selected by Stolen Generations organizations to give a formal response to the apology. "Today our leaders across the political spectrum have chosen dignity, hope and respect as the guiding principles for the relationship with our nation's first people."

The apology ended years of divisive debate and a decade of refusals by the previous conservative government that lost November's elections.

It places Australia among a handful of nations that have offered official apologies to oppressed minorities, including Canada's 1998 apology to its native peoples, South Africa's 1992 expression of regret for apartheid and the U.S. Congress' 1988 law apologizing to Japanese-Americans for their internment during the second world war.

Aborigines lived mostly as hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years before British colonial settlers landed at what is now Sydney in 1788. Today, there are about 450,000 Aborigines in Australia's population of 21 million.

The debate about an apology was spurred by a government inquiry into policies that from 1910 until the 1970s resulted in 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children being taken from their parents under laws based on a premise that Aborigines were dying out.

Most were deeply traumatized by the loss of their families and culture, the inquiry concluded. Its 1997 report recommended a formal apology and reparations.

Rudd ruled out compensation — a stance that helped secure support for the apology among the many Australians who believe they should not be held responsible for past policies, no matter how flawed.